Thursday, October 2, 2008

Hollywood Sets the Trend

Hollywood reflecting the fashion of its day or inspiring the fashion of its day is rather like a chicken/egg scenario. It’s sometimes difficult to know what came first.

In some cases, Hollywood ruled the day, as in the famous “It Happened One Night” (1932) example where Clark Gable removed his shirt when undressing for bed and ta-daa! Gasp! He wasn’t wearing an undershirt! Manufacturers and retailers of men’s underwear shuddered as sales dropped for undershirts.

We can also point to Sonja Henie and her fabulous white skates. White boots for girls’ figure skates is so standard now that we may forget that when ice skates made that first amazing transformation from just the kind you clamp onto your shoe to the kind that has its own built-in boot, they were all brown or black no matter if the skate was for a male or a female. Sonja Henie’s white skates, her trademark, changed the industry and fashion for skates.

Women’s pants were made acceptable by the Hollywood stars which adopted them in private life, even if they were not seen in many films.

Reportedly, colored shirts for men in public was the result of John Gilbert’s attending a party without changing the shirt he wore for shooting at the studio that day, which was blue. Photographers and graphic artists out there will know that light blue photographs lighter and softer than white in black and white photography. A white shirt will cause more glare from the lights, but a soft blue absorbs the glare and photographs as white. Apparently if John Gilbert can wear a colored shirt to a party, it must be the thing to do.

4 comments:

People look at films and are influenced to change their behavior, and I'll bet gimmicks like these in films reflect some previous or developing trend in real life. And those trends were likely inspired by some development in art...which were inspired by something happening in real life which...

With movie viewing a more temporary experience through cable, DVD, and delivered almost instantly to something as disposable as a cellphone that's a good question. However, if movies didn't continue to influence filmgoers and predict purchasing behavior then I don't think companies would waste the advertising dollars on product placement that seems to intrude on the mise en scène in many a recent flick. Have you noticed any specific trends? I wonder if a film historian has written a book on this? If not, how about it Jacqueline?

A fascinating subject, but as for noticing trends, I am so firmly ensconced in TCM that the latest flick at the cineplex is a strange and unfamiliar world to me. I haven't noticed any trends, but that's not saying much.

Young men seem to be enormous fans of video games, and the action movies geared to that demographic look almost like video games. Young women and girls, I'm not so sure. Does the popularity of "Sex and City" spur offshoot products? Or, does the TV show just recommend the movie and the movie recommend the TV show? Kids' movies, now that's a different story. Nothing but character merchandizing, which evidently must be very lucrative.

But the adults? I can recall a generation ago "Annie Hall" making a huge impact on fashion and retail clothing. Yet when about a decade ago "Titantic" made such a hit with teenage girls, did that spur any interest in Edwardian clothing or jewelry? I think it just made a hit single for Celine Dion.

Being so out of the loop when it comes to current fads, I don't think I'm equal to a book on the topic. Therefore, I make a lateral pass to my teammate, you.

Bob the Bear - a picture book by my twin brother & Me

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Recent Comments on Past Posts:

It Happened to Jane is special to my family. My mother was selected to play the wife of Aaron Caldwell, the Chester town selectman in the movie and has a speaking part about the parking meter revenues gathered from outside his general store in the town center. My older brother was one of the cub scouts delivering coal donated by town residents to fuel Old 97. We grew up in Deep River. A few years ago a niece provided every member of music family copies of It Happened to Jane on DVD. The Connecticut River valley was truly an idyllic spot for growing up in the mid-Twentieth Century!

Thank you, the Lux Theatre broadcast was absolutely marvelous, and far superior, as you have indicated, the film. I have always admired Dorothy McGuire, and she has it all over Jean Peters. This is not as clear cut a differential between Joseph Cotton and Dan Dailey, but at this point in their grand careers, I will take Dan. Again thank you.

I jus watched this and I have to agree... the ending let me down. She left Howard Keel!!!! I've had a crush on him since seeing Seven Brides when I was 10.I did love the message that Rose Marie can be herself.But I'm still sad. Seriously, Rose Marie, you chose the wrong man.

My wife and I go back two decades for our love of “Remember the Night” and its heartwarming story...P.S. As I type these words I am reminded of the inscription my wife had engraved inside the wedding ring I now wear… “Remember The Night.”

Beautiful piece, Jacqueline, about yet another movie from the Unjustly Forgotten file. I agree a video release is decades overdue, (What is wrong with Universal Home Video? You'd think the only movies they ever made were monsters and Abbott & Costello. And don't even get me started on the pre-'48 Paramounts they're sitting on.) I count myself lucky to have scored a decent 16mm print on eBay some years back; otherwise it would have been a good 40 years since I saw it.

I happened upon this piece and wanted to tell you how much I enjoyed reading it. Really a great appreciation of a wonderful movie. Raoul Walsh is one of my favorite directors and this is the first of his movies I ever remember seeing--it was on the big screen back in 1952 so I guess that dates me but a movie like this was ideal for my age, both for the adventure and romance.

I guess I'm going to be busy reading all your blogs that touch on events I'm familiar with.

Judgement At Nuremberg caught my attention as I had the privilege of working in it for some 60 days. But more so as the German WWII history always recall my own trials during the war.

I suppose we filmed this around 1959-1960 which is not that long after the ending of the war. Reconstruction in Europe was far from accomplished. For the audience in 1961 this history was still a part of everyone's life.

I was overwhelmed sitting in that set and listening to the greatest actors of that generation orate day after day... an endless live theater.